C'est la vie..

Navigation

Category Archives: Philosophy

Post navigation

Waiting to grow older when you are young. Waiting for a public holiday. Waiting for a weekend. Waiting to take a vacation. Waiting for someone to enjoy your life with. Waiting for that raise or promotion. Waiting for a better job. Waiting for your next big break. Waiting for that Europe trip. Waiting for more money in your account. Waiting for your children to grow older. Waiting for children to visit when you are old. Waiting for retirement.

Just waiting to be happy.. Waiting, as life passes you by smiling, but you are too busy to notice.

Have you ever wanted something so badly in life and then didn’t have it your way.. only to realize at a later point that not getting what you wanted was exactly the right thing to happen at that point in time. You realize that you’re a much better and wiser person because of that one incident of deprivation you went through. (And hey, I am not talking about a ‘grapes are sour’ like feeling here!)

And after the suffering you endured, it feels better, much better to have passed that test and you realize you’re a changed person.

It almost seems surreal after everything is in the past, as you think of yourself ‘a crazy, insane lunatic’ to have wanted that thing in first place. It has happened with me many a times. I keep obsessing and fantasizing, and wanting things the way they are in my head.. but life knocks my plans down all the time. When things don’t go my way, I think of it as cruel to have happened to me but then sometime in the future (after weeks or months or an year), the universe reveals it’s rationale to me. That’s when I say to myself, “Oh yeah right! What was I thinking in the first place?”.

Steve Jobs said, “Customers don’t know what they want”.

That’s true for us in real life, too. The truth is, we don’t know what we actually need and what is good for us. Hence, we cling to things or circumstances or people that seem good to us at the moment. But we are meant for more, much more.. and that precisely, is the reason that life drives us to a different direction that’s better for us.

The truth is, it doesn’t get any better! May be life will get worse still, at some point.

But there will be enough moments with your loved ones, or doing what you love all alone, or simply moments when you’re having a good time among people that will make you get through all of it. And may be you’ll even feel it’s all worth it after all.. so suck it up!!

Don’t bother about others opinion of you.

Do something new, go places you’ve never gone, talk to strangers and life will seem beautiful all over again. Because hey, it’s not like anyone has any better formula to life!!

Life is not just about that one moment, thing, person that matters (mattered) to you! Life is much more than that..life has a better plan for us than we could plan for ourselves. And as long as one believes in that, we can get thro’ no matter what.

Love this song by Eels! (The video is hilarious too.)

Do you know what it’s like to fall on the floor
And cry your guts out ’til you got no more
Hey man now you’re really living

Have you ever made love to a beautiful girl
Made you feel like it’s not such a bad world
Hey man now you’re really living

Now you’re really giving everything
And you’re really getting all you gave
Now you’re really living what
This life is all about

“Creative work is often driven by pain. It may be that if you don’t have something in the back of your head driving you nuts, you may not do anything. It’s not a good arrangement. If I were God, I wouldn’t have done it that way.” ― Cormac McCarthy

The well-known American author Cormac McCarthy mentioned this in his interview to Wall Street Journal in 2009, when quizzed about his writing work and sources from where he draws his inspiration. There has been an ongoing debate forever now, on the co-relation between pain and creativity and many believe that they – suffering and art – are directly co-related. In a sense, the greater the pain one suffers in life at some point of time leads to higher manifestations of those painful emotions into creative works of art.

As crazy as it may sound, it is true for a large number of musical geniuses of the world too. If you’re a music aficionado like me, you’ve definitely heard of the 27 Club – greatest musicians of the world who died only at the age of 27, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, to name a few. Of course many of these were accidental deaths, though basically led by disturbed mental condition or substance abuse habits.

For the record, I believe in wishful thinking and consider myself a shameless optimist. And not to take any credit away from those creative artists and people who have their creative juices flowing even in a happy state of mind and produce amazing results. I am myself in a creative writing and designing job, and I am not a drug addict, not yet!! But I also think it is kind of sad that so much of exemplary creative work -art, music, writings and poetry- in the world is a result of the pain and suffering, endured by these talented artistic souls.

I asked “What about my eyes?”

God said “Keep them on the road”.

I asked “What about my passion?”

God said, “Keep it burning.”

I asked “What about my heart?”

God said, “Tell me what you hold inside it?

I replied “Pain and sorrow.”

He said, “Stay with it. The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” ― Rumi

Centuries before McCarthy gave that interview to Wall Street Journal and was even alive, Rumi the Persian poet wrote the above lines. May be it might be that true wisdom comes from pain and suffering and hence, the creativity that emerges from that wisdom is pure, honest and inspiring!

Belief is a loaded word! Belief or faith carries a huge weight in our lives.

The whole world revolves around belief, the belief in the greater goodness and the hope that good times would embrace us in future. As much as we talk about living in the moment and enjoying each day to the fullest, the truth is – the strong belief of a better tomorrow drives that strength to carry on and face each day with a smile knowing that failure or bad news may just be a day away. It won’t be wrong to say that our believes pretty much guide our lives.

I may be a hardcore and shameless optimist, self-proclaimed philosopher and the queen of wishful thinking! But everyone has those grey moments of self-doubt, when you question your own existence and the rationale behind your beliefs. When every single development around you tells you that it was all wrong in the first place. (yeah, you can definitely tell I am having those self-doubts again 😛 )

Learning not to believe once your belief fails you, is not a sign of strength. To believe again knowing the risks, therein lies the thrill. Never stop believing!!

And till your belief comes true, you can pretend that your ship’s not sinking.. love this song from Pretty Woman soundtrack.

Real happiness doesn’t know any boundaries of reasons and it needs no explanation. It lies within oneself and finally, all comes down to the “glass half full or half empty” attitude in life.

More often than not, in life all of us have reasons to smile, more than one or two or three reasons. It’s incredible though how conveniently we choose to ignore these reasons, even forget them and focus on what we don’t have. The “have nots” in life will always outweigh the “haves”. It’s the simple ‘law of scarcity’ in economics!!

In the movie Confessions of a Shopaholic, the main character justifies her impulsive buying behavior saying, “When I shop, the world gets better, and the world is better, but then it’s not, and I need to do it again.” Anything that seems out of our bounds and limits is desirable. Amazing as it is.. the jubilation of attaining that – what is desired – is short lived and fizzles out, evaporates in thin air. Now you know why I always say, Life is “funny” all the time. 🙂

The traditional mindset that happiness always inter-relates with a reason is not false, but it is definitely not for the long run. We don’t realize the amount of time, effort, energy we give up on waiting for happiness to knock on our door – that car I never had, the branded shoe I couldn’t buy, the job I am planning to take up, and the list is endless. Real happiness lies in smiling at simplest joys of nature and life, not worrying about how tomorrow’s gonna look like. If one can do that everyday of their life.. then you have lived fully, each and every moment of everyday. Some wishful thinking that is, huh!!

But hey, we all are work in progress! And most of us even in our busy schedules find out a reason to smile at something completely irrelevant to us, or simply appreciate nature. It’s not too hard! Agreed that happiness without a reason, is easier said than done – an idealistic scenario. Even as I write this, one part of my brain simply can’t stop thinking about the current impending concerns of my life. The demons inside us come back to haunt us sooner or later.

“The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.” – George Bernard Shaw

I find a lot of debate going on about this particular quote by GB Shaw and whom he considered or portrayed as superior in this statement. The ‘drunken man’ is ‘happy’ because he knows no tomorrow and ‘believes’, but is illogical and irrational at the same time considering his inebriated state. While, the ‘skeptic’ is more ‘sober’ and rational. This is the general belief. I have a different take on this! A ‘believer’ is ‘happy’ as he is an optimist and refuses to acknowledge that his belief would fail him. (Simply, discarding the believer because it equates with the drunken state of mind is not acceptable to me.)

More often that not, that belief is what would make everything fall in place – however, the means to achieve may differ. I am not propagating here that we start believing life is a fairy tale. But we can definitely believe that we can make it to be one, in our own way. Reality is far more interesting than a fairy tale.